| Title: | The Joy of Lex |
| Notice: | A Notes File even your grammar could love |
| Moderator: | THEBAY::SYSTEM |
| Created: | Fri Feb 28 1986 |
| Last Modified: | Mon Jun 02 1997 |
| Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
| Number of topics: | 1192 |
| Total number of notes: | 42769 |
I was interested to read in Eric Partridge's USAGE AND ABUSAGE
Sporting Plurals item where he suggests that sporting jargon speaks
of: Lion - Trout - etc where the sportsman really means Lions or
Trouts.
Have you ever heard of a herd of cow? You may have heard of a herd
of Elephant though.
Are there other examples, either sporting (blood or otherwise) or
non-sporting?
Bucko...
| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 692.1 | Numerous examples .... | ULYSSE::WADE | Mon Jul 03 1989 23:11 | 3 | |
Sheep Walrus Ptarmigan Buffalo Bison Pheasant Partridge Platypus .......... | |||||
| 692.2 | VISA::MONAHAN | humanity is a trojan horse | Tue Jul 04 1989 11:05 | 1 | |
What sort of sportsman hunts sheeps :-) (Don't answer). | |||||
| 692.3 | Macaroni: no one can eat just one... | BLAS03::FORBES | Bill Forbes - LDP Engrng | Sun Jul 09 1989 18:30 | 15 |
My wife's family (Italian-American) have some plural usages which
strike me as strange:
"He bought twenty brick to repair the walk."
...definitely distinct from "brick" as a count noun as in "He bought
a load of brick to repair the walk."
"I'll have some more of those macaroni."
...but they never speak of having just one more macaronus. Along the
same line, my wife's grandmother always referred to her tenants - a
couple of Irish descent - as "the Maroney".
Bill
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